A number of people have asked why we are considering major changes in P&T policy. The most definitive answers should come from committee members. But to get some discussion started, I can share the reasons I have heard from the committee and from the Vice Chancellor. Members of the P&T Committee have been kind enough to meet with me on a one-to-one basis to discuss policy and various proposals. In addition, the Academic Vice Chancellor meets with the AAUP president on a fairly regular basis to discuss upcoming issues that are pertinent to AAUP concerns. Her concerns about existing policy have come up in our discussions a couple of times in recent years.
1) The phrase “active involvement” is somewhat vague and misleading.
This is the reason most often given. The problem the Vice Chancellor seems to have with this phrase is that some young faculty conclude that it suggests that activity may be enough without anything actually ever being accomplished. My recollection is that while the Vice Chancellor felt this was particularly a problem in the scholarship area, she also saw the phrase as problematic in describing service.
The P&T Committee settled on this phrase back in the 1980s, and I remember that even we who were on the committee were not entirely satisfied with it. Perhaps we should have tried harder. The phrase could be more precise. However, having said that, any young faculty who read their department/school guidelines or attend the highly informative information sessions that the P&T Committee hold each year should certainly understand that active involvement demands real accomplishments in both areas.
The descriptors the current P&T Committee proposes for scholarship are an improvement. However, two references to peer review is perhaps overkill. Reference to “products (some peer reviewed)” is probably enough to make the point. In addition, part of the phrase “commensurate with department/school guidelines and the external peer review process” may not quite make sense when one realizes that commensurate means “equal in measure to” or “proportionate” (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary). Being equal in measure to or proportionate with a process may be a bit confusing. On the other hand, being commensurate to department/school guidelines is a clear and useful phrase in pointing faculty to more detailed guidelines in what they are expected to accomplish.
The P&T Committee, for whatever reason, did not add any precision in describing what is expected in service. The proposed wording seems even less precise. “Active involvement” was replaced with just “involvement.” In the view of AAUP, more than just involvement should be expected. Faculty should also be expected to accomplish some things in the area of service. We feel that an expectation of some real accomplishments in service is consistent with not only current practice in how files are evaluated, but also with our mission, campus culture, and relationship to the community.
2) The Committee was mandated to make some kind of changes.
Most committee members seem to share this feeling. They seemed to feel that they had to come up with a proposal, even if it came very late in the year.
A similar impression existed last year when we thought that we had been told to adopt a very tightly defined external peer review process. We thought that we had no choice. Yet when faculty clearly and strongly communicated that the mandated policy violated who we were and undermined our mission, the situation changed dramatically. We were able to create our own policy so that it would be consistent with our campus culture and values. That is precisely what we did. We created a pretty good policy that is not overly burdensome and includes appropriate due process protections.
Whether that is the situation this year is not clear. The P&T Committee has already refused to make one change that was requested by retaining the possibility of tenure at the assistant level. AAUP fully supports that refusal.
We would hope that our faculty would refuse to enact other changes that we may see as inconsistent with our mission, culture, and relationship to the community, especially when once again, the precise nature of any mandate is not clear.
3) More scholarship, especially that which is peer reviewed, improves chances of having tenure approved by Columbia.
This is almost certainly true. What Columbia is willing to accept is a real concern that we must have. We do young faculty a disservice if we give the impression little to no scholarly accomplishments are required for a successful p&t application.
However, we are aware of no evidence that those who clearly meet the current level of “active involvement” in scholarly activity are having problems at the Columbia stage of the process. From my experience in giving advice to those few who have had problems, the problems stem from failing to clearly meet the existing standard of active involvement. AAUP feels that clearly meeting that standard, however described, and performing superior service should continue to be considered worthy of positive decisions.
The AAUP’s objections to the proposal do not rest on a “straw man” argument that service should be allowed to substitute for all accomplishments in scholarship. No one has made that argument in any serious way since sometime in the 1980s when the baby boomer generation of new faculty who glutted the academic market became a majority of the faculty. That generation expected to perform research and firmly believed that research informs teaching. AAUP’s objections concern balance and choice and the importance of service to the community.
4) Doing less service gives faculty more time to engage in research.
This observation is also unquestionably true. How much less service and the kinds of service most likely to be lost are the concerns.
AAUP has been long concerned with increasing service demands, especially university service on a proliferating number of committees and record-keeping exercises on campus. That was a great part of our objection to the external peer review process as originally proposed last year and to the original peer review of teaching plan several years ago. We have pushed to keep faculty off committees in their first year. We have complained when we felt that this norm was being violated. Yet despite all this, the “coral reef” of university service expectations continues to grow. The more that it grows, the less time will be left for community service or for scholarly activities or even for teaching, our number one priority.
5) Finally, some would justify these changes as making USCA’s policy more similar to that of other institutions.
Even with some shortcomings in descriptive terminology, USCA’s promotion and tenure policy has served the school well. We have attracted and retained an incredibly productive faculty in both scholarship and in service, not to mention teaching. Having served three terms on P&T and two and a fraction terms on PTR, I am always humbled by the accomplishments of my colleagues when I review their files. I am continually amazed that students from Augusta choose to come here rather than stay in Georgia and pay lower tuition to attend ASU. USCA has won high rankings year after year. Even Columbia officials praise us for the service we do in the community, witness the statements made by the Columbia Provost at 16 April awards ceremony. Our faculty perform extremely well in winning system, state and even national awards year after year.
Given our record, one might wonder why we should want to become more like other institutions. Given our record, we might be wise to be extremely careful in upsetting a balance that has served us so well.
Having said all this, perhaps a different balance that places more emphasis on scholarship and less on service would serve USCA and the community even better. That is the question posed by this new policy proposal.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
A more accurate description of current practices?
A number of people have asked me if this proposal is nothing more than a more accurate description of current practices. Some comments to other posts suggest that others feel this to be the case. So perhaps this question deserves a separate post.
One clue that this proposal is at least substantially if not dramatically different is the fact that the P&T Committee felt compelled to delay full implementation of the policy for five years, to “grandfather” out faculty currently on campus, at least for the initial decisions of tenure and promotion. Were the proposal merely a more accurate description of what we already do, it could have been implemented immediately. The committee could have taken a more modest approach to simply improve descriptions of what is currently expected.
Second, the proposal must be setting a different standard because it shifts from a three point scale in evaluating scholarship and service (unacceptable and two levels of acceptable accomplishments) to a two point scale (unacceptable and acceptable or pass/fail). The new single level of what is acceptable simply cannot be the same as the old two levels. It can be higher or lower than either of the old levels. It can be the same as one or the other. Or it can be somewhere between the two. That is clearly a different standard.
One clue that this proposal is at least substantially if not dramatically different is the fact that the P&T Committee felt compelled to delay full implementation of the policy for five years, to “grandfather” out faculty currently on campus, at least for the initial decisions of tenure and promotion. Were the proposal merely a more accurate description of what we already do, it could have been implemented immediately. The committee could have taken a more modest approach to simply improve descriptions of what is currently expected.
Second, the proposal must be setting a different standard because it shifts from a three point scale in evaluating scholarship and service (unacceptable and two levels of acceptable accomplishments) to a two point scale (unacceptable and acceptable or pass/fail). The new single level of what is acceptable simply cannot be the same as the old two levels. It can be higher or lower than either of the old levels. It can be the same as one or the other. Or it can be somewhere between the two. That is clearly a different standard.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
What impact will this have on community service?
If service is devalued so that no reward exists for anything beyond "involvement," what will be lost? Will passive involvement on some committees be sufficient? Of course we cannot know for sure until future P&T committees decide what the acceptable minimum is as it examines files over several years. But once that minimum is established, what incentive will exist for additional service?
We might suspect that faculty will continue to at least serve on USCA and departmental committees to keep the school functioning. Most probably community service is what will suffer the most. In P&T deliberations, some members suggested that faculty will continue to do community service anyhow. That conclusion flies into the face of a wealth of findings in social science that human beings respond to incentives. While some may continue to do community service for purely altruistic reasons, faculty are human and subject to well-established patterns of human behavior. Why does South Carolina have the highest percentage of nationally certified teachers? The answer is that the state provides significant incentives to seek certification. Some teachers in other states still seek certification, but most do not. Why do students work harder on projects that count for more in their grades?
So the question is what kinds of things will be lost that we currently do? What impact will this have on our relationship to the Aiken community, a relationship that is becoming ever more important as we get less and less state support?
We might suspect that faculty will continue to at least serve on USCA and departmental committees to keep the school functioning. Most probably community service is what will suffer the most. In P&T deliberations, some members suggested that faculty will continue to do community service anyhow. That conclusion flies into the face of a wealth of findings in social science that human beings respond to incentives. While some may continue to do community service for purely altruistic reasons, faculty are human and subject to well-established patterns of human behavior. Why does South Carolina have the highest percentage of nationally certified teachers? The answer is that the state provides significant incentives to seek certification. Some teachers in other states still seek certification, but most do not. Why do students work harder on projects that count for more in their grades?
So the question is what kinds of things will be lost that we currently do? What impact will this have on our relationship to the Aiken community, a relationship that is becoming ever more important as we get less and less state support?
Who will be affected and what are the unintended consequences?
The effective date for this proposal might seem to suggest that it will not affect current faculty. See the phrase at the bottom of the proposal:
This policy applies to all tenure-track faculty hired in or after August 2009 and all tenured faculty seeking promotion after August 2014.
It will not affect those applying for tenure who are currently here and those applying for promotion before 2015. So it will affect those here who get through tenure and promotion to associate, but whose application for promotion to full professor comes after 2014.
However, every policy has unintended consequences, what might be called spillover effects. Here are a few of likely effects that might affect everyone.
1) Leakage into the Post Tenure Review Process. Currently the Post Tenure Review process states that people will be judged by the same standards at which they were promoted. This year the PTR Committee was asked to change that policy so that people are measured against current standards. This PTR Committee chose not to do that. But no guarantee exists that future PTR committees will not move in that direction.
2) Usefulness of annual ratings in the PTR Process. The PTR process rests on annual reviews that rate scholarly activity and service as either satisfactory or meritorious. These two acceptable ratings have a natural fit with the existing two acceptable ratings in P&T standards. It is easy to figure out if someone really excels in one area or the other. That will no longer be true if only "involvement" is required in service and if the highest level of merit is required for scholarly activity. So the old "satisfactory" will become an unacceptable rating in scholarly activity and the old "meritorious" rating in service will be of no value.
3) Leakage into the annual review process. If meritorious service is of no value in the P&T or PTR process and if satisfactory is no longer satisfactory in the P&T and PTR process, will we eventually feel compelled to change our annual ratings, which now have three levels, into a kind of pass/fail rating system? If so, then this will affect everyone. The only ones not affected would be those who are within a few years of retirement.
4) Recruitment of new faculty for the next 5 years. Having a delay in the effective date of this policy might place us in the uncomfortable position of showing job applicants two sets of P&T policies in our Faculty Manual. One, a flexible policy that does not apply to them and two, a one-size-fits-all policy that seems to expect higher standards in scholarship for them. We already are having problems in retaining faculty who find they can move to to other schools and make more money, teach fewer classes, and have the same research expectations.
This policy applies to all tenure-track faculty hired in or after August 2009 and all tenured faculty seeking promotion after August 2014.
It will not affect those applying for tenure who are currently here and those applying for promotion before 2015. So it will affect those here who get through tenure and promotion to associate, but whose application for promotion to full professor comes after 2014.
However, every policy has unintended consequences, what might be called spillover effects. Here are a few of likely effects that might affect everyone.
1) Leakage into the Post Tenure Review Process. Currently the Post Tenure Review process states that people will be judged by the same standards at which they were promoted. This year the PTR Committee was asked to change that policy so that people are measured against current standards. This PTR Committee chose not to do that. But no guarantee exists that future PTR committees will not move in that direction.
2) Usefulness of annual ratings in the PTR Process. The PTR process rests on annual reviews that rate scholarly activity and service as either satisfactory or meritorious. These two acceptable ratings have a natural fit with the existing two acceptable ratings in P&T standards. It is easy to figure out if someone really excels in one area or the other. That will no longer be true if only "involvement" is required in service and if the highest level of merit is required for scholarly activity. So the old "satisfactory" will become an unacceptable rating in scholarly activity and the old "meritorious" rating in service will be of no value.
3) Leakage into the annual review process. If meritorious service is of no value in the P&T or PTR process and if satisfactory is no longer satisfactory in the P&T and PTR process, will we eventually feel compelled to change our annual ratings, which now have three levels, into a kind of pass/fail rating system? If so, then this will affect everyone. The only ones not affected would be those who are within a few years of retirement.
4) Recruitment of new faculty for the next 5 years. Having a delay in the effective date of this policy might place us in the uncomfortable position of showing job applicants two sets of P&T policies in our Faculty Manual. One, a flexible policy that does not apply to them and two, a one-size-fits-all policy that seems to expect higher standards in scholarship for them. We already are having problems in retaining faculty who find they can move to to other schools and make more money, teach fewer classes, and have the same research expectations.
Tabular Presentation of Descriptor Changes
The table in the link below compares descriptors in the current policy with those in the proposed policy.
Comparisons in the table suggest three major changes.
1) Lower standards for those applying for tenure who already are at the rank of associate or full professor. The table shows tenure at a given rank and promotion to that same rank right after each other in order to highlight a rather significant and perhaps unintentional change. Current policy has the SAME standards for tenure at a given rank and promotion to that rank. This proposal has LOWER scholarship standards for someone applying for tenure at a given rank than for someone applying for promotion to that same rank. Hiring someone at the associate or full rank without tenure is a rare situation, but it can happen, most usually when the university hires chairs or department/school heads from the outside.
Though rare, this may raise an issue of fairness in terms of equal treatment. For example, someone hired as a full professor without tenure will not have to demonstrate to the P&T Committee the same high standards in scholarship as someone applying for the rank of full professor. That full professor applying for tenure could possibly be the supervisor of the person applying for full professor and be passing judgment on the quality of scholarship of the applicant for full professor, applying standards that the supervisor does not have to meet.
2) Devaluation of service. All descriptors suggesting high levels of service are dropped. "Outstanding service," "significant contributions," and even the lowest level descriptor of "active involvement" are gone in the proposed policy. The only standard one has to meet is simply "involvement" in service or "sustained service" for those applying for full professor. This seems to set a rather low bar. One of the complaints about current policy has been that "active involvement" does not suggest that anything should be accomplished. Dropping the term "active" suggests that even passive involvement might be good enough in service.
3) One-size-fits-all in the balance between service and scholarly activity. Current policy rewards faculty for very high levels of scholarly accomplishment or very high levels of service by allowing them to have lower levels in the other area. The proposed policy gives no choice or reward for great accomplishments in either area. Faculty need only meet some minimal level of involvement in service and what seems to read as a high level of scholarly accomplishment.
Notes:
1) Teaching descriptors are not shown in the table because they remain the same in the proposal as in current policy.
2) To shorten the presentation of scholarly activity descriptors,"..." is used in place of the phrase "scholarly/creative/applied professional activities."
Click Here for Link to Table
Comparisons in the table suggest three major changes.
1) Lower standards for those applying for tenure who already are at the rank of associate or full professor. The table shows tenure at a given rank and promotion to that same rank right after each other in order to highlight a rather significant and perhaps unintentional change. Current policy has the SAME standards for tenure at a given rank and promotion to that rank. This proposal has LOWER scholarship standards for someone applying for tenure at a given rank than for someone applying for promotion to that same rank. Hiring someone at the associate or full rank without tenure is a rare situation, but it can happen, most usually when the university hires chairs or department/school heads from the outside.
Though rare, this may raise an issue of fairness in terms of equal treatment. For example, someone hired as a full professor without tenure will not have to demonstrate to the P&T Committee the same high standards in scholarship as someone applying for the rank of full professor. That full professor applying for tenure could possibly be the supervisor of the person applying for full professor and be passing judgment on the quality of scholarship of the applicant for full professor, applying standards that the supervisor does not have to meet.
2) Devaluation of service. All descriptors suggesting high levels of service are dropped. "Outstanding service," "significant contributions," and even the lowest level descriptor of "active involvement" are gone in the proposed policy. The only standard one has to meet is simply "involvement" in service or "sustained service" for those applying for full professor. This seems to set a rather low bar. One of the complaints about current policy has been that "active involvement" does not suggest that anything should be accomplished. Dropping the term "active" suggests that even passive involvement might be good enough in service.
3) One-size-fits-all in the balance between service and scholarly activity. Current policy rewards faculty for very high levels of scholarly accomplishment or very high levels of service by allowing them to have lower levels in the other area. The proposed policy gives no choice or reward for great accomplishments in either area. Faculty need only meet some minimal level of involvement in service and what seems to read as a high level of scholarly accomplishment.
Notes:
1) Teaching descriptors are not shown in the table because they remain the same in the proposal as in current policy.
2) To shorten the presentation of scholarly activity descriptors,"..." is used in place of the phrase "scholarly/creative/applied professional activities."
Click Here for Link to Table
The P&T Proposal
The link below goes to the proposal composed by the P&T Committee and submittted to the Faculty Assembly.
The "Change from" statements are the existing policy but have some words struck out that get dropped out in composing the new proposal. Other words also are dropped in the new proposal, but they are not struck out. So the reasoning behind the strike-outs is not entirely obvious. However, the "Change to" statements show what was left of the current policy and underlines new wording that is proposed. So that is the new proposed policy.
Click here to see the full text of the proposal from P&T
The "Change from" statements are the existing policy but have some words struck out that get dropped out in composing the new proposal. Other words also are dropped in the new proposal, but they are not struck out. So the reasoning behind the strike-outs is not entirely obvious. However, the "Change to" statements show what was left of the current policy and underlines new wording that is proposed. So that is the new proposed policy.
Click here to see the full text of the proposal from P&T
Welcome to a virtual open meeting on P&T proposals
This is an experiment, sponsored by USCA AAUP. Finding time to meet to informally discuss and comment on important policy proposals is becoming ever more difficult, especially at the end of the semester. A blog might be a way this can be done so that it fits everyone's schedule. We shall see.
On March 25 the P&T Committee met for an hour and a half and finished composing a new set of P&T policies, which they had started working on last fall. In a 5 to 4 vote the committee decided to make major changes in the current system with respect to the balance between scholarly activity and service. These changes went well beyond what many had thought the committee was doing, simply adjusting wording to better describe current practices.
In the view of AAUP, these changes will have dramatic and profound implications for our identity and mission, for our relationship to the community, for how we spend our time as professors, and for the recruitment and retention of faculty. It is also likely to have significant spillover effects on the Post Tenure Process, annual evaluations, and on departmental guidelines for promotion and tenure. In short, much needs to be discussed and debated before we adopt such significant changes.
The P&T Committee did not schedule any open meetings to answer questions or consider alternatives, at least of this writing. So AAUP, which had an observer at the last two P&T meetings in which these changes were finalized, is creating this blog to allow all to see and comment on the proposal. Of course, you can also ask questions in your comments. Of course, you do not have to comment or ask questions, you may just want to consider what others are saying.
AAUP hopes that the members of the P&T Committee who supported these changes will take this as an opportunity to explain the reasoning behind their proposals and to clarify their intentions. Answering questions this way may save a lot of time at our last Faculty Assembly and also allows time for more reasoned responses.
A few of simple rules in posting comments/questions.
1) Be collegial and polite, so no personal attacks. If you violate these rules, I will remove your comment and send it back to you asking you to edit it.
2) To see comments, you can click on the post in the Blog Archive or on the heading of the post in the right hand frame.
3) To post a comment, just click on “comments” below the post. A drop box will come up in which you can type in your comment or question.
4) Anonymous comments are allowed (so you do not have to sign up and create a profile), but it would be nice if you signed your name at the end of the comment. I will, as noted above, remove any anonymous comments that are not collegial.
On March 25 the P&T Committee met for an hour and a half and finished composing a new set of P&T policies, which they had started working on last fall. In a 5 to 4 vote the committee decided to make major changes in the current system with respect to the balance between scholarly activity and service. These changes went well beyond what many had thought the committee was doing, simply adjusting wording to better describe current practices.
In the view of AAUP, these changes will have dramatic and profound implications for our identity and mission, for our relationship to the community, for how we spend our time as professors, and for the recruitment and retention of faculty. It is also likely to have significant spillover effects on the Post Tenure Process, annual evaluations, and on departmental guidelines for promotion and tenure. In short, much needs to be discussed and debated before we adopt such significant changes.
The P&T Committee did not schedule any open meetings to answer questions or consider alternatives, at least of this writing. So AAUP, which had an observer at the last two P&T meetings in which these changes were finalized, is creating this blog to allow all to see and comment on the proposal. Of course, you can also ask questions in your comments. Of course, you do not have to comment or ask questions, you may just want to consider what others are saying.
AAUP hopes that the members of the P&T Committee who supported these changes will take this as an opportunity to explain the reasoning behind their proposals and to clarify their intentions. Answering questions this way may save a lot of time at our last Faculty Assembly and also allows time for more reasoned responses.
A few of simple rules in posting comments/questions.
1) Be collegial and polite, so no personal attacks. If you violate these rules, I will remove your comment and send it back to you asking you to edit it.
2) To see comments, you can click on the post in the Blog Archive or on the heading of the post in the right hand frame.
3) To post a comment, just click on “comments” below the post. A drop box will come up in which you can type in your comment or question.
4) Anonymous comments are allowed (so you do not have to sign up and create a profile), but it would be nice if you signed your name at the end of the comment. I will, as noted above, remove any anonymous comments that are not collegial.
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